TO THE

RIGHT REV. THE DEAN,

AND THE CHAPTER OF DURHAM,

THE

FOLLOWING LECTURE,

PRINTED OUT OF DEFERENCE TO THEM,

IS DEDICATED,

IN TOKEN OF SINCERE ADMIRATION OF THEIR MUNIFICENCE,

AND OF WARM GRATITUDE FOR

THEIR PERSONAL KINDNESS TO THE AUTHOR.

A

LECTURE,

&c.

Ir was my object, in my last Lecture from this place, to state the reasons which present themselves to my mind, as strongly showing the exalted nature of the study of divinity, and its superiority in the eye of reason, even when not looked at as a professional study, over many of the popular pursuits of the day. It is my wish to-day, in conformity with the objects of the office consigned, for the present, to my hands, to point out the necessity and advantages of the study of Church History, the spirit and manner in which it should be written, and in which it should be read. In the former case, I was constrained to complain of the difficulty and the extent of the subject, and I shall be fully justified in repeating those complaints

to-day. The narrow limits of time to which a Lecture of this kind is properly confined, though quite enough to exhaust your patience and my strength, are miserably inadequate to doing justice to a subject like this. The history of the Christian Church is the history of man, in the most momentous period, and on the most momentous of all points, and must consequently present a boundless field for speculation and research. In that field, we learn how the intellectual nature is advanced by the light poured on the moral being; in that field, we learn how strenuously the evil principle resists the good, how long it struggles, how slowly it retires; in that field, we learn how perilous it is to neglect or overlook great principles in practice, and how miserably corrupt practice tends to generate corrupt principles. On questions so wide, so boundless, it would be hopeless in a short address like this, to do more than cast a passing glance, and it must be my humble endeavour to tread a narrower, yet, I would hope, a not less useful path, by suggesting such advantages as may arise-not to the unwearied student, or the profound inquirer alone, but to all who will devote a fair and proper share of their time to this important study.

I must premise that in speaking of the uses of Church History, I mean its uses to believers; i. e. I take the truth of Christianity for granted. We must regard it as a gift of God to man sent into the world with a divine promise, that the gates of hell shall never utterly prevail against it; a heavenly seed which, as it cannot grow without the dew and sunshine of its own blessed climate, so has the promise of that dew and that sunshine to give it increase, but yet is to be planted, watered, watched, and fostered by the care of that frail being, for whose correction, exaltation, and redemption, it was sent into the world. In its history then we look to find the fulfilment of the promise on the one hand, and a confirmation of our faith and hope; and, on the other, while we shall see with joy joy unspeakable the blessings which Christianity has brought into the world, bettering man's condition in time, as well as directing his firm hope to eternity, we expect to find in the page of ecclesiastical history, fearful warnings against the misuse or neglect of those blessings, and warnings of another kind against the careless administration of the holy treasureagainst the evils which may be done to nations and to centuries by the coldness or the fana